Taking a quick break from the immortality stuff, here’s something I found while researching ways to live forever: A method and apparatus of obtaining peace of mind:
All up in yer quantums.
From the abstract:
It is believed that quantum entanglement from this physical world can carry information which might be vulnerable to a human’s quantum mind especially when one is performing meditation, exercising Qi-Gong, taking rest or relaxation, or at sleep. Protection is thus needed to protect a quantum mind during these mentally weakened situations.
The inventor, Hoton How, was prolific in the early 2000s, with a degree from MIT, and received patents for a number of serious-seeming inventions dealing with different aspects of electromagnetism, so this one stands out a bit. He seems to have passed away in 2020, so we’ll never know what led him to this hard left turn.
The application starts off with a description of quantum entanglement, before comparing microtubule structures in prehistoric urchins to antennas. It goes on to discuss a variety of physical effects, with occasional ties back to biological structures, and touches on prediction of the future, before circling back to quantum entanglement.
The application falls prey to a common challenge faced by scientists with a spiritual bent: How to dress up their beliefs in the language of science to make them more palatable, to themselves and to others.
Quantum entanglement can only happen in the presence of matter. Thus, quantum information will congregate more in solid and in water than in air. This is the reason that a dying patient feels his soul leave his body lying straightly atop on the ceiling looking downward onto the doctors rescuing his life, depicting a common picture of the near-death experiences.
USPP 2007/0135676, ¶44
The aim of the invention is to limit the amount of quantum entanglement between the meditator and the rest of the universe. See, you’re getting hit with quantum information from the rest of the universe from the moment of conception, as shown in this diagram:
“[T]he sperm’s tail acts like a monopole antenna and receives a spiritual soul before entering the egg cell.” ¶39
So, in the presence of all this spiritual noise, how do you keep the quantums out of your brain? You build a cool box that levitates on magnets, and put another box around it! That’s the whole invention. The rest of the application was mostly just the inventor’s ruminations on reality.
The patent was rejected, on the basis of being generally incredible and also having done before. It turns out, isolating a box from its environment is old tech. Nonetheless, the inventor seems to have filed a second application with additional material after the patent examiner told him he didn’t have enough in the specification to support the quantum entanglement stuff.
I hope Hoton was content with how the application ended. He did give up after the second try, and I didn’t find any other public material about his ideas, so I’m guessing he found contentment in his quantum box. He seems like he’d have been a fun guy to talk to.
Patenting the odd, the impossible, and the unnerving 